


The Thaw

by xbedhead



Category: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Daniel Craig needs more bath scenes, F/M, Gen, Implied Torture, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Introspection, Recovery, Torture, canon AU, extreme h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:36:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbedhead/pseuds/xbedhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I can't tell you what to do."</p><p>"Can't or won't?"</p><p>"You wouldn't do the things I would do."</p><p>"Things are different now."</p><p>"Martin Vanger is dead. Nothing I would do can be done."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> The end of _Dragon Tattoo_ taken a little further. Nothing terribly explicit, but not for the faint of heart. I just needed a little more hurt and a little more comfort from these two characters. Some scenes adapted from the English 2011 version of the film. This is unbeta'd, so all of the errors are on me. I hope the skips between past and present are clear enough - unless noted, they all take place in the present. Con-crit and feedback appreciated.

_"I can't tell you what to do."_

_"Can't or won't?"_

_"You wouldn't do the things I would do."_

_"Things are different now."_

_"Martin Vanger is dead. Nothing I would do can be done."_

-##-

_Two Days Earlier..._

"You should be in the hospital."

Blomkvist says nothing, and she pulls her ankles closer to her naked thighs, crosses them and takes a shaky drag.

He breathes in, then expels it with disgust. "I can still smell him on me," he confesses quietly.

She taps out her cigarette and stands in a fluid motion, moving into the bathroom without a backward glance. She runs the faucet just shy of scalding and jams the plug into the drain. When she turns back to the bedroom, she avoids the mirror.

"Come," she orders gently, holding her gloved hand out to him.

He eyes her over his shoulder, and for a moment, she's sure he's going to hunker down in his blanket again, hiding his head from the world. He hesitates and she lifts her brow but says nothing. She sees concession in his eyes and waits as he pushes back the covers and gingerly pulls himself upright. She hears his breathing quicken and can see the pain etched into his face, but doesn't make a move until he reaches for her, knowing (either from instinct or experience, she's not sure which) that it's important to wait for that, to let him decide what he wants.

He winces when he grabs hold, shifting his grip against the gauze, bloodied and tied tight over his palm. It takes him only a moment to get steady on his feet, but in that time she glances him over - takes in the way he's favoring his right knee, the hunch in his back because he can't quite stand straight, the fact that there's still traces of blood on the cloth pad she'd laid down on his bed. He shuffles into the bathroom with her at his side and she strips him as gently as she can without hurting his shoulders or neck. She's wearing a long t-shirt and a pair of his boxers, sagging low on her hips, and she peels off her fingerless gloves and helps him settle into the steaming water.

It's not easy - he's weak after what he's been through - but he manages to get into the tub with as little mess as possible. He groans deeply and leans back, his movements stiff until he melts into the curve of the warming porcelain.

She doesn't ask if he's okay - he'll tell her if he isn't. She stands and empties the toothpaste and toothbrush from the cup by the sink, then kneels and scoops the water up, pouring it over his head. Her movements are quick, efficient - she doesn't think about being tender or soft, there's nothing sensual about what they're doing. She doesn't know if he could handle that right now.

She lathers up a rag and runs it over his neck and chest, careful of the angry red stripes where the leather harness had cut into him. She washes in between his fingers, scrubbing away the rusty blood she'd missed the night she'd brought him home. She draws his knees up a little and runs the rag over them, mindful of the deep purple bruises and the shallow cuts across his thighs. His feet and toes receive the same treatment, soon washed clean of any traces of his captivity.

She parts his legs and slips the rag between them, moving as gently as she can. He flinches and closes his eyes a little tighter, but doesn't move away from her. She pulls the cloth away and studies its fibers, stained with traces of pink.

"Mikael," she starts, but he turns his head and opens his eyes.

"Don’t," he warns. His voice is raspy, unused except for screams that had driven him hoarse and maybe a shifted trachea from where Vanger's fingers had threatened to crush his windpipe. But the sentiment is still there.

A beat or four passes while she holds his gaze, but she finally breaks away, deciding that if this is how he wants to it to be handled, she can give him that.

-##-

“Are the painkillers helping?”

“Yes. How did you get them?” he breathes. After a moment’s pause, he amends, “Never mind.”

They’re stretched out on the firm hotel mattress, bodies parallel, not touching. He’s staring at something over her should when she reaches for him. Her fingers trace the raw redness over his neck that disappears into his shirt. He shudders at the contact and she pulls her hand away, unsure of why she’d done that.

“Wait.”

She doesn’t look at him, keeps her eyes trained on the scratched and calloused surface of his palm. It’s upturned toward her, beckoning the return of her spindly fingers.

He licks his lips, looking away from her once more, as he reaches for her. When his hand closes around hers, he whispers, “I need you…to just…to touch me.”

She thinks she understands what he means.

She regards him for a moment and he releases her, pulls back almost imperceptibly when she doesn’t move for him. She takes a deep breath, sucking her lip ring into her mouth. Her palm rests gently on the side of his face and his earlobe catches between her fingers. She brushes through his hair, watching his face, looking for something, anything that tells her this isn’t okay.

She sees nothing.

He releases a deep breath she hadn’t noticed he’d been holding as the pads of her fingers ghost over his cheek, his nose, skirting over the purpled skin surrounding the bullet-grazed path carved into his forehead. She shifts toward him as his eyelids drift closed. 

_So much trust. Even now._

She wonders if she’ll ever know that.

-##-

_Three Days Earlier..._

She's called his cell eight times in the last two days. 

She's cleaned the house, boxed up everything and sent it to the post in Hedestad. She keeps a gun on her - a Glock, no safety – and her taser is charged. She’s positioned cameras on Martin Vanger’s house; she knows he hasn’t left in over thirty-six hours.

She also knows for certain, now, that Mikael must be inside.

She wonders what sort of game he’s playing, why he hasn’t come after her, too. Surely he must know that she’s in on his secret, that she’d spotted the same tell in the photo that Mikael must have. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter. She knows what she has to do, regardless of what Vanger’s plans are. Maybe he wants her to wait, to stew; maybe he’s luring her in slowly with the uncertainty of her own fate as well as Mikael’s.

She’s been on his deck for the last three minutes and hasn’t heard anything stirring inside so she slides the glass door open and steps inside.

She’s lightheaded, a feeling she always gets when she’s somewhere she doesn’t belong. But she pushes forward, gun drawn, held awkwardly between two hands that aren’t used to carrying a weapon so blatantly.

The house’s blueprints Martin had drawn up were on file at the Vanger Industries vault and she’d committed them to memory, not knowing then if she’d ever actually need them. She was glad she did.

She moved confidently toward the hallway that opened into what one would suppose was a wine cellar, but, judging by the amount of earth removed from the sub-levels, was a much larger room. She moves lightly, conscious of the heavy soles of her combat boots, but stops suddenly when she sees the keypad lock on the door.

“ _Shit_ ,” she breathes, nearly putting the weapon away to examine the model.

It’s only when she leans close she realizes the door hasn’t caught.

It’s almost too easy, but again – she knows what she has to do. She keeps the gun held tight in her right hand and pulls the door open slowly with the left. There’s a short, dark hallway, but it opens up into a well-lit room several meters away. Her steps are slow, measured.

"No, no, no – come back here," she hears Vanger chide. There’s a garbled sort of groan coming from inside the room and she tastes bile in the back of her throat. Another step into his lair and she can see Mikael.

He is tied, dangling naked from a hook in the ceiling, some sort of belt wrapped around his neck and armpits. His face is purplish and his feet are kicking weakly at Vanger.

The man has his balls in a vice grip, tugging him back and forth, making shallow cuts into the delicate flesh with the knife he’s got in his left hand. 

“You say she’s your assistant, and that may be true,” Vanger muses, quietly laughing to himself, “but I know when a man is fucking a woman. The hair and all that metal…it repulses me, but…is that what gets you off, Mikael?”

He doesn’t even notice her as he she steps into the room, but she can see Mikael’s eyes. He bucks and twists away from Vanger, trying to distract him.

“ _Hey_ ,” she hisses, club raised.

Martin Vanger hasn’t a clue the kind of holy hell he’d just opened up.

She brings the metal rod down, hard, across the side of his head. Blood from his cheek goes arcing through the air, splattering the tile already stained with Mikael’s.

-##-

It takes only ten minutes to get him out of the tub, dried, and back into bed this time. By the time Lisbeth lights another cigarette, Mikael is passed out in a haze of painkillers. She knows she should eat something, get _him_ to eat something, but there’s nothing within walking distance of the motel and she doesn’t want to leave him alone for very long.

She watches the smoke swirl about her face and tries to remember the crack she felt reverberate up the club and into her arms. It’s mildly satisfying, but not nearly enough.

-##-

_Five Days Earlier..._

_"Henrik asked me to ask you something."_

_"What was that?"_

_"Come on in. I'll make you a drink."_

The throbbing in his hand wakes him. He tries several times to open his eyelids, but finds the blasted things too complicated. There's an ungodly pressure on his knees and shoulders and it takes him a moment to realize he's been tied at the ankles, bent over and held that way by a chain around his neck. His wrists are cuffed together and he can make out the blurred red edges of a cut running the length of his palm. 

Another moment and he understands the current cramping in his back, his elbows, his ankles - he's in a cage, walled in on all sides, knees threatening to slip through the spaces between the bars. His heart begins to race as everything comes rushing back to him - putting the pieces together with the photo and Martin's role, coming to the house and trying to escape only to be pulled back in by his own capitulation to social norms. His head throbs with the residual effects of whatever he'd been gassed with and he nearly gags as his stomach lurches, anxiety and nausea building now that his situation was becoming quite clear.

He shifts his shoulders and hips, testing the boundaries of the cage. There isn't much room. 

He takes in the large space before him - white tiles with a drain in the center of the floor, chains and pulleys hanging from the ceiling, stainless steel surgical tables and a black leather couch. 

A video camera.

He swallows hard, choking back the bitter bile that finally purges itself from his stomach, and rests his head against the bars, staring blankly through the empty inches that separate him from the floor. He has no idea how much time had passed. Lisbeth was most likely on her way back from the archives. Would she have put the pieces together and suspect Martin? He hoped. Either that or her acquired fear and clinical distrust of any male figure would keep her safe, would keep her from looking for him. 

But if she never came...

His body breaks into a cold sweat thinking of what would most likely happen to him. And after how long? How long did Martin Vanger keep his victims? Hours, days, _months_? Henrik was incapacitated, Herr Frode was at his bidding and the rest of the Vangers didn't want him there. Martin could sway the investigation into his disappearance in any way that he wanted. 

He shifts again in his cage, joints pressing hard against the stainless steel bars. It doesn’t do him any good, but he puts all of his effort into it, pushing and pulling and suddenly he’s panting, grunts of frustration and sheer terror slipping through his clenched teeth. He pulls his neck so hard against the chain his vision starts to blur and he forces himself to stop, nearly hyperventilating and sick with fear. His eyes dart around the open room once more – there are no telephones, only two doors that he can see, both solid, no windows.

He’s trapped, he knows that now.

“ _Fuck._ **Fuck.** ”

What if Erika came looking for him? What if she went back to the last place she’d seen him, weeks after he’d been incommunicado? If she went through with the Vangers’ pledge to fund the magazine, Martin would have no trouble luring her back here, offering her the same drink he’d been given. And _Jesus Christ,_ Nilla knew he was there as well…

His breath comes in shaky pants and a low whine emanates from somewhere deep in his gut. His forehead is pressed against the unforgiving bars when he hears a soft ‘clack, clack, clack’ against the tiles.

Vanger steps into his line of sight and squats so they’re face to face. He has a pair of pliers in one hand, a rag in the other. He smiles. "Mikael, you're awake. Good."

-##-

The food is in a brown bag on the table by the window, getting colder by the minute. He hasn’t been inclined to get out of bed except to use the restroom and bathe and she supposes she should be worried, maybe try to get him to do something, but it doesn’t seem right – pushing him. So she lies down next to him after stripping off her layers of leather and chains. His eyelids are wrenched shut and she can see the muscles in his jaw flexing.

“Open your eyes.”

She knows he’s awake and when he doesn’t, she reaches for him, her fingertips barely brushing his wrist. His eyes snap open at that, pupils dilated with the surfacing fear. He gulps in fresh air, his lips quivering. He isn’t going to cry, but the adrenalin needs to escape somehow.

“Don’t keep your eyes closed like that,” she whispers.

He swallows, eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. “I see him when they’re open.”

She considers him for a moment, then says, “That will stop.”

“When?” he asks, almost immediately.

She has no idea what to say, so she shrugs. “It stopped when I wanted it to stop.” He looks confused, so she continues, gaze dropping to his neck and the ruddy patch of chest exposed at his collar. “You forget too soon and it makes you weak, a target for the next one. Sometimes you need anger, the fear, to keep you going.”

She reaches for him, slowly, and pulls out the chain coiled just beneath his shirt. The metal is warm between her fingertips and when she glances back up at him, his eyes are full. She releases the pendant and curls one hand under her chin, lets the other wander over his face, the pads of her fingers tracing the heavy bone of his brow. “I don’t know how to fix it for you, only for myself. I’m sorry.”

He gives her a small, watery smile and whispers, “I wish you’d never had to learn in the first place.”

She inches forward at that, dipping her head down on the pillow so it fits in the crook of his neck. She can feel his heart beating against her knuckles and it grounds her. 

“Me, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by the Swedish proverb "What is hidden in snow, comes forth in the thaw."


End file.
